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Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty sits quietly before his Liberal party and the Progressive Conservative party passed an anti-strike bill that cuts benefits and limits wages for Ontario teachers at Queens Park in Toronto on Tuesday. (Michelle Siu / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Protestors hold signs during a rally in front of Queen's Park to fight against the "Putting Students First Act" that freezes Ontario Teachers' wages and cuts benefits in Toronto on Tuesday, August 28, 2012. (Michelle Siu / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Sam Hammond, president of the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, speaks to the media after passage of a controversial anti-strike bill that cuts benefits and limits wages for Ontario teachers. (Michelle Siu / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

By Rob Ferguson and Robert BenzieQueen’s Park Bureau

Tues., Sept. 11, 2012

Up to 136,000 public school teachers will drop extracurricular activities like running clubs and coaching teams on Wednesday to protest Ontario’s new law freezing their wages and banning strikes.

“It is not business as usual,” Sam Hammond, president of Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario, warned Tuesday at Queen’s Park after MPPs passed Bill 115.

The Progressive Conservatives joined forced with Premier Dalton McGuinty’s minority Liberal government to approve the legislation by a margin of 82-15, with the New Democrats voting against.

Hammond said he has asked his 76,000 members “to take a pause in any volunteer activities they are now doing . . . (and) focus on students in the classroom.”

“I’m not setting a time limit on it,” he said of the protest, noting “McGuinty Mondays” — where teachers are asked by their union not to attend any in-school meetings or meetings with the school system or ministry officials on Mondays — will begin next week.

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Unlike the ETFO, the 60,000-strong Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation said its members would withdraw extracurricular services only on Wednesday and wear black clothes or armbands.

“The classrooms will be unaffected,” insisted president Ken Coran, adding the law rammed through by the Grits and Tories shows “the D for democracy is a D for dictatorship.”

McGuinty, who has increased teachers’ compensation by 25 per cent since 2004, said the government has no choice but to belt-tighten as it struggles with a $14.8-billion deficit.

“We are doing what we need to do,” the grim-faced premier told the house.

In the public galleries above him, teachers and other union members, who held a 5,000-strong rally at Queen’s Park two weeks ago, shouted “shame” when the bill passed.

“Isn’t there school today?” several Tory MPPs shot back.

A gleeful Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak said he was happy the Liberals finally followed his call for a wage freeze.

“Teachers may be mad at Dalton McGuinty because he promised one thing and did the opposite,” he said, crowing that his party has consistently called for restraint and wants wages frozen for everyone on the public payroll, including doctors, police and firefighters.

The Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association and French-language teachers weeks ago signed a similar deal that would also halve their sick days to 10 annually, end unused sick days from being cashed out at retirement, and impose three unpaid days off.

But the agreement allows younger teachers to continue moving up through the salary grid as they gain experience.

Education Minister Laurel Broten said the legislation is retroactive to Sept. 1, when teacher contracts rolled over resulting in an extra $473 million in annual costs for other grid increases for some teachers and more accumulated sick days.

It has been a rough ride for the Liberals, who recalled the legislature from its summer break two weeks early to debate the bill, then watched their long-time political allies in the education unions abandon them.

In last Thursday’s Kitchener—Waterloo byelection, teachers and public-sector union members propelled New Democrat Catherine Fife to victory in a seat Conservative Elizabeth Witmer held for 22 years.

McGuinty had appointed Witmer as $188,000-a-year chair of the Workplace Safety Insurance Board in April to vacate the riding — then seen as winnable for the Liberals — with hopes of regaining a majority in the house.

“We feel absolutely betrayed. We will not let them forget it — as we did in Kitchener—Waterloo,” said Hammond, vowing to defeat other Liberals and Tories in a general election that could come in the spring.

Broten, likely a top target in her Etobicoke—Lakeshore riding in the next election, said the government had no choice but to move quickly despite the political ramifications of alienating teachers’ unions.

“I have the greatest of respect for voters,” she said of the Liberals’ poor third-place showing in Kitchener—Waterloo. “However voters vote . . . they never get that decision wrong.”

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath predicted the law would result in a costly constitutional challenge from teacher unions whose collective bargaining rights have been overridden.

Indeed, the unions will get the legal wheels rolling “immediately,” said Fred Hahn, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees in Ontario, representing education support workers.

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